Postal systems have existed in all human civilizations as a standardized and efficient way to enable transportation of items of limited size and weight (letters and packages) between individuals and institutions. Focusing on parcel delivery and disregarding mail and also referring to FIGS. 1 and 7, a typical postal transaction includes the following: a sending party (“sender” 700); an object to be transported (“parcel”); a postal service organization (“carrier” 704); a receiving party (“recipient” 706); a standardized format used by the recipient to inform the sender of the location where the parcel should be transported to (“address”). Usually a parcel postal method occurs as follows: the sender 700 desiring to ship a parcel inscribes the recipient's address on the parcel and then hands the parcel off to the carrier 704, often after traveling a significant distance to take the parcel to the nearest carrier's terminal 702. The carrier 704 can be the U.S. Postal Service, the United Parcel Service, Federal Express, or the like. The terminal 702 can be a carrier's drop-point or office, or can be a drop box. If the carrier 704 is not open for business when the sender 700 arrives, the sender 700 may have to return home and try again at a later time or date. If the carrier 704 is open, then a financial transaction is conducted whereby the sender 700 pays in advance for shipping and delivering the parcel. The carrier 704, based on the information encoded in the address, transports the parcel to the recipient's delivery location and attempts delivery. More recently the carriers 704 have begun to offer a service where they travel to the sender's address to pick up the parcel for shipping. However, this method is very manpower intensive and requires either that the sender 700 be available at the address for a large window of time or that an expensive fee is levied on the sender 700 if a smaller window is desired.
Postal addresses typically include the recipient's name, organization (if applicable), and information about the physical location of the delivery destination, such as street, street number, unit or apartment number (if applicable), city, state, and optionally nation. Such information can also be encoded in standardized alphanumerical representations, such as a zip code or postal code, which simplify the delivery method and allow for better error correction. Postal addresses are typically inscribed using both human-readable and machine-readable forms through the use of a variety of encoding techniques, such as bar codes. If a recipient 706 has more than one possible delivery location, one address is required for each delivery location. For example, a recipient 706 might have a “home address” for her residence and an “office address” for her business. Under conventional, or legacy, shipping and delivery systems, the sender 700 must provide a single delivery address at the time the parcel is dropped off with the carrier 704 and/or at the terminal 702.
Focusing on the last segment of the delivery chain and referring also to FIG. 2, current parcel delivery services suffer from many potential problems, especially when dealing with residential (i.e. non-business) recipients 706. These problems include, but are not limited to:
The recipient 706 might not be available when delivery is attempted, for a variety of reasons. With residential deliveries, since the parcels arrive during business hours, often the recipient 706 is at work instead of being at home. Additionally, the recipient 706 might be temporarily elsewhere, or the recipient 706 might have moved to a new address and failed to notify such action to the sender 700 and/or the carrier 704. As a result, the delivery has to be attempted again until the recipient 706 is found or for a limited number of times, as shown in steps 216-222. Alternatively or consequently, the parcel can be returned to the sender 700 as in step 224, or the parcel can be left on the exterior of recipient's premises, thus endangering the security, privacy and reliability of the transaction. All these problems cause extra costs to the carrier 704 and potential inconvenience or damage to the recipient 706.
Even if the recipient 706 is present, the time required to complete the delivery can fluctuate widely. Both its average length and the variance of this length are a source of cost and complexity for carriers 704. Particularly in the case of a residential (i.e. non-business) recipient 706, these problems are normally exacerbated by the limited numbers of parcels dropped at each location and by the long average distance traveled by carriers 704 to reach the recipient's premises.
Additional delivery services such as “signature for reception” and “cash on delivery” are extremely expensive for carriers 704 and inconvenient for recipients 706 because they are synchronous; i.e., in order to complete such services and effect delivery, the carrier's agent and the recipient 706 must be in the same place at the same time. Analogous (but inverse) problems exist when focusing on the first segment of the postal chain. The shipping method usually taxes the sender 700 with tedious activities such as going to a “shipping point” 702 (i.e. a post office or a retail store operated by a private carrier or a shared drop-box placed on the territory) or waiting for a scheduled pick-up.
As described above, a postal address embeds one single delivery preference of the recipient 706 and clearly discloses the physical location of the preferred delivery destination. Because of this characteristic, postal addresses suffer from a variety of limitations that cannot be directly overcome. For example:
If a recipient 706 has multiple addresses, the recipient 706 must inform the sender 700 about the one address that should be used for each shipment. If the physical location of one delivery destination changes, the recipient 706 must inform all potential senders 700 by issuing a new address. For example, if a user moves to a new residence, she must inform all potential senders 700 by giving them a new “home address.” In order to enable a sender 700 to ship, a recipient 706 must reveal the physical location of the delivery destination. For example, if a recipient 706 wants to have a mail piece delivered to her residence, she must disclose the physical location of her residence (e.g. by giving her “home address” to the sender 700). Once a sender 700 knows the recipient's address, the recipient 706 can not prevent the sender 700 from shipping a parcel to the recipient 706. The recipient 706 might be able to reject a letter or parcel, but the item has first to be transported all the way to the delivery destination.